The School Survival Forums are permanently retired. If you need help with quitting school, unsupportive parents or anything else, there is a list of resources on the Help Page.

To everyone who joined these forums at some point, and got discouraged by the negativity and left after a while (or even got literally scared off): I'm sorry.

I wasn't good enough at encouraging people to be kinder, and removing people who refuse to be kind. Encouraging people is hard, and removing people creates conflict, and I hate conflict... so that's why I wasn't better at it.

I was a very, very sensitive teen. The atmosphere of this forum as it is now, if it had existed in 1996, would probably have upset me far more than it would have helped.

I can handle quite a lot of negativity and even abuse now, but that isn't the point. I want to help people. I want to help the people who need it the most, and I want to help people like the 1996 version of me.

I'm still figuring out the best way to do that, but as it is now, these forums are doing more harm than good, and I can't keep running them.

Thank you to the few people who have tried to understand my point of view so far. I really, really appreciate you guys. You are beautiful people.

Everyone else: If after everything I've said so far, you still don't understand my motivations, I think it's unlikely that you will. We're just too different. Maybe someday in the future it might make sense, but until then, there's no point in arguing about it. I don't have the time or the energy for arguing anymore. I will focus my time and energy on people who support me, and those who need help.

-SoulRiser

The forums are mostly read-only and are in a maintenance/testing phase, before being permanently archived. Please use this time to get the contact details of people you'd like to keep in touch with. Send me a message if you'd like to keep in touch with me & Steve.

Please do not make a mirror copy of the forums in their current state - things will still change, and some people have requested to be able to edit or delete some of their personal info.

I feel like there's a lot of people who say "I'd never do xyz", and think that they're superior because of these standards that they hold themselves up to... but then if you put them in a tough spot, they'd do it. For example: "I'd never steal from anyone!". Well, shit, if you needed to in order to survive, you probably would.

Or they'll say, for example: "If someone tried to hurt my kid, I'd hunt the fucker down and kill them!". But if someone did try to / did hurt their kid, they probably wouldn't end up doing shit about it other than trying to cope with it and keep living. And although I guess it might be comforting to have these beliefs or these ways you believe you could still win back some pride or end up victorious in a bad situation, they seem like they're all mostly false.

I also dislike when people talk about what they would or wouldn't do. That said, I believe that there are certain violations that if they were inflicted upon me or certain loved-ones I would respond with my best attempt to inflict death on the person or persons responsible. I do concede that you never know until it really happens what you would do but I've considered certain scenerios quite seriously and there are certain things I'm confident I'm willing to lose it all over. Talk is cheap, though. Take it with a grain of salt.

If you want to be a different fish, you've got to jump out of the school.

Yet when you have no answer thats either or, they think your indecisive or bullshitting. As if it makes sense to make a decision on something withiut knowing all the factors. It becomes a gamble then because if you choose a practical option that goes against what you said, they nag you about.